White man speak with forked tongue
Did anybody actually say this pre-Hollywood? Is it a genuine Indian metaphor? If not, when does it first appear?
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I can't see any connexion. If you take the form of a snake, naturally you have a forked tongue.
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But I think that is the connexion/connection.White man speaks like a snake. But where do they connex?
View ArticleRe: White man speak with forked tongue
I don't think anyone's disputing that the phrase is an implicit comparison between a deceitful person and a snake. The question is whether it's a Native American term.Since the snake is thought to be...
View ArticleRe: White man speak with forked tongue
Thinking about it further, I suppose one could have come up with the metaphor of a forked tongue without thinking of snakes and their alleged deceitfulness.I still don't believe it's authentic Native...
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Great point. So then the question is, was the snake a symbol of duplicitousness (duplicity?) in Native American culture prior to Christian missionaries and their creation story? That question is...
View ArticleRe: White man speak with forked tongue
I still don't believe it's authentic Native American, thoughOn what basis? Not trying to be snarky, I'm genuinely curious. I can't imagine having an opinion on this without having done some pretty...
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Of course, but it's a long shot, isn't it? If we made a bet on whether there was a rock shaped like a horse's head on a particular mountain, I'd certainly rather be betting against. I might be wrong,...
View ArticleRe: White man speak with forked tongue
I have a bit of a hard time with the idea that a person with limited knowledge of English would come up with a sophisticated contruction and metaphor like "forked tongue" yet not know the simple words...
View ArticleRe: White man speak with forked tongue
The problem here is trying to prove two negatives. That is to say that the idea of a snake's forked tongue could not have been a metaphor for duplicity in Native American fokelore or mythology, or...
View ArticleRe: White man speak with forked tongue
Well, of those examples, the first and the fourth, which are more or less the same, do seem to show that at least one particular tribe saw the forked tongue as a symbol of duplicity.Considering how my...
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Found a bit more:Quote:The holy man Black Elk of the Teton Sioux Reservation in the 1880's declared: All our people now were settling down in square grey houses, scattered here and there across this...
View ArticleRe: White man speak with forked tongue
On the other hand,Oglala Lakota holy manControversy has swirled around the book. How much of the book is Neihardt and how much is Black Elk? Was Black Elk a believing Christian or hiding his true...
View ArticleRe: White man speak with forked tongue
At least, though, it's evidence that he used the phrase and that it's not a Hollywood invention.
View ArticleRe: White man speak with forked tongue
it's not a Hollywood invention.Once again, my professional interests and procilivities precedes the question.
View ArticleRe: White man speak with forked tongue
He held out his fist, index and middle finger protruding in the white man's "V" for victory sign, only his word was "forked tongue" as in "lies."Indian Sign Language by William Tomkins gives the sign...
View ArticleRe: White man speak with forked tongue
At the risk of being labelled an aeolist, I would just like to remind you all that fissilingual means having a forked tongue.www.islandnet.com/~egbird/dict/words.pdf
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That rock is looking more and more hippocephalic...
View ArticleRe: White man speak with forked tongue
Another interesting sidelight on this: according to the OED, the forked tongue was long popularly supposed to be the viper's "sting", i.e., it, rather than the fangs, was thought to deliver the venom....
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